Murder in the Cathedral - Dictionary definition of Murder in the Cathedral | Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary Murder in the Cathedral Literature and Its Times Supplement 1 COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot THE LITERARY WORK A play set in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170; first performed in Canterbury, England, in June 1935. SYNOPSIS Archbishop Thomas Becket returns from exile abroad to face martyrdom—he must resist the temptations of King Henry ll’s agents and come to terms with his impending death. For More Information Although T. S. Eliot (Thomas Sternes Eliot) was born in 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, he moved to England in 1914 and officially became a British subject in 1927. The choice to leave America for England was one of many that reflect a conservative frame of mind. In 1929, Eliot described himself as an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature, and a royalist in politics; all three look back to traditional forms of belief, literature, and government.

Yet Eliot’s literary work was simultaneously revolutionary and conservative; he caught the spirit of his age by marrying modern language and classical allusion in his poetry. Eliot’s first major published poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915), captured the spiritual paralysis of a world suddenly and radically changed by the First World War. In his later and perhaps most famous poem, “The Waste Land” (both also in Literature and Its Times), Eliot juxtaposed historical and literary allusions with the common speech of everyday people. When Eliot turned his attention to drama, he maintained his commitment to marrying the new to the old; for instance, he championed the writing of drama in verse, as Shakespeare and the ancient Greeks had done. Eliot’s first drama was The Rock (1934), a pageant play. Then came Murder in the Cathedral (1935), followed by plays such as The Family Reunion (1939) and The Cocktail Party (1950). Eliot was also the editor of the publishing house Faber & Faber, and a major literary critic whose essays shaped two generations of scholars.

By turning to the past in his poetry, drama, and criticism, Eliot defined the literary taste of the twentieth century. In Murder in the Cathedral, Eliot tells a story from the past in a style of the past to illuminate the brutality of his own 1930s world. Events in History at the Time of the Play Henry II vs. Becket: A historical overview Murder in the Cathedral is a play based on the real-life historical conflict between King Henry II of England and Archbishop Thomas Becket. Becket had risen from lowly origins to become King Henry’s close friend, loyal servant, advisor and ambassador. In 1154 Henry appointed Becket to the post of chancellor, arguably the most powerful secular post in England. King Henry (reigned 1154-89) was trying to consolidate England into a nation at the time, which involved his regaining control over its Catholic Church. But the Church had obligations to the Pope in Rome, and these obligations could conflict with loyalty to king and state. Henry decided to appoint his good friend and right-hand man, Thomas Becket, to the post of archbishop of Canterbury so that he would have an insider in the Church.

But to everyone’s surprise, once Becket had been consecrated archbishop his attitudes changed entirely; he became a devout Catholic entirely devoted to Rome, which infuriated Henry. Further enraging the king, Becket began to excommunicate Henry’s supporters, to expel them from the Church, inflicting a very serious punishment on them for prioritizing the king’s will over what he saw as God’s will. The relationship between the former friends deteriorated rapidly, and in 1164, Becket was summoned to trial. Instead, he fled to France. There were many attempts to reconcile Henry and Becket, but all of them failed. Henry seized Becket’s property and exiled his relatives from England; Becket continued to excommunicate the king’s supporters. The dispute came to a head in 1170 when Henry had his eldest son crowned as co-king b’y the archbishop of York. By the existing protocol, Henry had overstepped his authority: the right to crown kings was exclusive to the archbishop of Canterbury. Becket, supported by the Pope, thus excommunicated everyone involved. Henry, fearing papal wrath, allowed Becket to return to England.

The archbishop reentered England, returning to Canterbury December 2, 1171, the date on which the first part of Murder in the Cathedral takes place. But though reinstated, Becket refused to compromise on any issue; which allegedly prompted Henry to muse aloud, “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” Four leading knights seem to have taken Henry at his word. They went to Canterbury on December 29th, 1171, the date on which the second part of Murder in the Cathedral takes place. When Becket refused to reinstate Henry’s excommunicated supporters, the Knights followed him into the Cathedral and tried to drag him out. The situation turned violent and the knights killed him with their swords. The entire murder was eyewitnessed and recorded by a man named Edward Grim, whose account Eliot uses as a basis for his play. Within days, Becket’s tomb became a destination for pilgrims. Henry was instantly labeled a murderer. Now at a disadvantage, he gave Pope Alexander an opportunity to forge peace with England to the benefit of the Church. A year later, Henry would perform an act of public penance and renounce many of his plans for bringing the Church under state control.

Two years later the martyred Becket would be canonized as a saint. The aim of Church reform Gregorian Reform is a term coined in the twentieth century (by historian Augustin Fliche) for a series of spiritual and intellectual reforms that were set in motion by Pope Gregory VII (reigned 1073-85). In particular, Pope Gregory was interested in stopping simony (obtaining church blessings or high positions in unethical ways, by, for example, buying them or offering them for political gain). In the Libri tres adversus simoniacos (1057-58; “Three Books Against the Simoniacs”), Humbert of Silva Candida argued that all sacraments per-formed by priests who were simoniacs or who had been ordained by simoniacs were invalid. This issue arises implicitly in Murder in the Cathedral when Becket refuses to undo the excommunications of the priests who crowned Henry II’s son. Those priests went beyond their authority since the archbishop of Canterbury alone had the right to crown the English king in order to oblige a king’s political wish to see his son crowned. Another important issue for the eleventh and twelfth century was enforcing celibacy for priests.

At this time, many lower-level priests were married, despite the fact that marriage for priests had been forbidden by the Council of Nicaea in 325 c.e. Various popes during these years repeatedly ordered priests to give up their wives and barred the sons of priests from inheriting their father’s church positions and church property, but the orders were widely ignored across Europe. Furious that papal orders were being disobeyed, Pope Gregory VII insisted upon complete obedience to papal legislation. This had the unfortunate side effect of sowing discontent between the Church and the emerging European nation-states, whose leaders wanted allegiance from their priests. Gregory’s insistence left kings with the uneasy concern that the clergy’s loyalties were divided between their own secular authority and that of Rome. The issue of church-state conflict was also seen in the “investiture controversy.” This controversy revolved around whether or not lay rulers could appoint bishops, abbots, or even popes. Because clergymen generally had political as well as religious influence across Europe at this time, functioning as local politicians as well as spiritual leaders, kings and emperors were understandably interested in controlling who was appointed to what post.

Gregory VII prohibited secular rulers from making such appointments in November 1078 at the Lateran Palace Council in Rome. The later Concordat of Worms (1122) tried to settle matters further by distinguishing between a clergyman’s state and religious roles. The larger goal of many of these reforms was to make clergy accountable to Rome rather than to the king or state, thereby reducing Church corruption and restoring its purity of aims. In the following century, the Church sought to have free elections to clerical posts, complete protection for Church property, and clerical submission to Church law rather than local tribunals or courts. This last goal became a particular bone of contention, as it exempted priests from being accountable to secular, national laws. The aim of royal reform The Constitutions of Clarendon (1164) were 16 articles issued by Henry II of England in an attempt to reassert control over the Church in the wake of the Gregorian Reforms. Under these articles, clergymen (including archbishops, bishops, and priests) had to ask the king’s permission before leaving the country, and they had to assure the king that they were not planning any treasonous acts while abroad.

The Church was restricted in its powers of excommunication and forbidden to take action against laymen on the strength of secret information. The king also was to have control over any vacant church offices. The most controversial articles stated that members of the clergy were now accountable to state courts. Previously, “criminous clerks”—members of the clergy who were accused of a crime—could be tried in the much more lenient Church or ecclesiastical courts. Now they would have to answer to the king if they committed a crime. Furthermore, clergymen used to be able to appeal directly to Rome for justice; the Constitution of Clarendon prohibited such appeals without royal permission. Finally, if there was a conflict between a layman and Church member, the king’s court was to have clear jurisdiction. Church leaders in England, including Thomas Becket, reluctantly agreed to the provisions. But when Pope Alexander condemned the Constitutions, Becket reversed his position, infuriating his former friend, King Henry. The issue of whether or not clergy were accountable to the state was, as noted, an especially sore point between Church officials and state authorities; it was perhaps the primary bone of contention between Henry and Thomas Becket.

After Becket’s martyrdom, Henry was forced to relent on the issue, though he never did specifically repudiate the Constitutions. In the next century, clerics would be tried in Church courts for their first offense, but if they committed a second crime, they were remanded to secular court. Henry II and the legal system Henry II became king of an England that had been wracked by feudal wars and civil disorder. Over the course of his reign, Henry, who would prove to be one of England’s ablest rulers, reorganized the nation as well as its justice system. He managed in the process to give the King’s law nationwide authority through a series of reforms. It is in the context of these reforms that we must understand Henry’s actions against Thomas Becket in Murder in the Cathedral With the help of the Constitutions of Clarendon, Henry attempted to make clergy accountable to state law rather than to have cases in his realm decided in two separate (and unequal) systems of justice. But this was only part of a much larger reworking of legal processes.

Before Henry, the most common way of ascertaining justice was “trial by ordeal,” in which an accused person would have to endure some form of torture, such as carrying a red-hot iron bar or putting his or her hands in boiling water. If the person was, by some miracle, not wounded by the torture, or if the injuries healed quickly, the response was taken as a sign from God, and the person was declared “not guilty.” Henry replaced this barbaric system with something much more like our contemporary legal system. His reforms (dictated by the Assize of Clarendon [1166]) called for accusations against a person to be supported by a 12-man grand jury. Only if the grand jury was convinced that a crime had been committed was further legal action taken. Additionally four law-abiding men had to testify under oath before that grand jury as to the accused person’s guilt or innocence. Henry also built prisons to house those awaiting justice, which meant that there were fewer hasty and impassioned verdicts. Putting an accused person into prison allowed time for criminal investigation and cooled the tempers of those involved. As a result of Henry’s reforms, the judge and jury system eventually supplanted “trial by ordeal” in England.

The life and death of St. Thomas Becket Thomas Becket (1118-70) was born in Normandy to a well-off merchant family. After being educated in Merton, England, and Paris, France, Becket joined the household of Theobold, who was then the archbishop of Canterbury. In 1154 Theobold introduced Becket to Henry II, and the two men took an instant liking to each other. Some contemporaries described them as more like brothers than friends. It was soon after their meeting that Henry named Becket his chancellor, and as chancellor, Becket helped the king enlarge the power of the monarchy. By all accounts Becket appeared to take pleasure from living the high-life of a top official; he enjoyed luxurious goods, lavish clothes and furniture, sumptuous meals, and riding and other sport. He seemed to relish the rise in status from upper-middle-class merchant’s son to consort of royalty. All this would change when Henry decided to make Becket archbishop of Canterbury. Ironically Becket warned Henry that the appointment could affect their friendship, but Henry was convinced that having his friend in England’s highest church position would bring further unity to the nation.

He could not have been more wrong. Thomas Becket was made a priest, then a bishop, and then archbishop of Canterbury in the space of two days, undergoing a personal transformation in the process. His lifestyle changed entirely upon the assumption of his new religious role. Becket set aside his lavish clothes and took to wearing the simple robes of a cleric, often with a coarse hair shirt underneath for penance. He stopped endorsing Henry II’s state policies and strictly followed the dictates of Rome. The year was 1162, so Becket was in his forties at the time. His transformation would puzzle historians, who have had a difficult time explaining how the worldly, fun-loving courtier became a devout priest almost overnight. Becket, on the other hand, retained the strength of character and iron will that he had shown in his tenure as chancellor; these same qualities would be evident in Becket-the-Archbishop-and-future-saint. Henry was incensed at what he saw as a betrayal by a friend, and after a series of clashes, Becket fled to France for seven years, where he lived under the protection of King Louis VII. Henry confiscated the property of Becket and his supporters.

There followed many failed attempts to reconcile the former friends before Henry finally met Becket at Freteval on July 22, 1170. A truce was negotiated, which allowed Becket to return to Canterbury on December 2. Twenty-seven days later, Becket was murdered by agents of the king; it is the time between these two events that is the subject of Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral The Play in Focus The plot—Part 1 (In the Archbishop’s hall, December 2, 1170). Members of the Chorus of the Poor Women of Canterbury set the scene for the audience, explaining that they have been drawn to the cathedral to bear witness to the coming events. They explain that the Archbishop (Thomas Becket) has been gone for seven years, and while they miss him, they fear his return because they know that there will be conflict between him and the King. “King rules or barons rule,” they tell us. “We have suffered various oppressions / But mostly we are left to our own devices / And we are content if we are left alone” (EliotMurder in the Cathedral, p. 12). Unfortunately all they can do is wait and bear witness.

Three Priests then take up the narrative, informing the audience that the Archbishop, the Pope, and the kings of England and France have been involved in conflicts, intrigues, and negotiations. The Priests argue that the goal of secular government is only to take power and stay in power. They wonder if everyone has forgotten “their father in God”(Murder, p. 14). A messenger arrives to announce that the Archbishop is coming, whereupon the Three Priests wonder, “Is our Lord Archbishop / Re-united with the King?”(Murder, p. 15). The messenger explains that Becket is coming home to a great fanfare and outpouring of love from the people, but that while he is “at one with the Pope, and with the King of France,” he still has not been united to the English King (Murder, p. 16). The women of the Chorus worry about Becket’s return, feeling that it will disrupt local life and hurt “the small folk drawn into the pattern of fate”(Murder, p. 20). They also fear for Thomas Becket’s life and wish he would stay away.

The Priests rebuke them, calling them “foolish, immodest, and babbling women”(Murder, p. 21). But when Becket arrives, he supports the women’s position, “They speak better than they know, and beyond your understanding,” because they know suffering (Murder, p. 21). Becket further explains that “action is suffering” and implies that the actions to come are painful but are also the will of God (Murder, p. 21). The Priests welcome Becket and bid him rest, but he says he is surrounded by enemies and spies who will at-tack when they are ready. At this point, Becket is approached by Four Tempters. The First Tempter tries to seduce him with memories of his old life as a rich and favored courtier. Becket resists him easily; he is no longer interested in worldly pleasures. The Second Tempter tells Becket he could do more good for the world by working within the king’s system than by opposing it, and suggests that Becket resume his career in politics. “Real power / Is purchased at a price of a certain submission.

/ Your spiritual power is earthly perdition” (Murder, p. 28). But Becket rejects the idea. He is the servant of God and the Pope; shall he “descend to desire a punier power?”(Murder, p. 30). The Third Tempter tells Becket that he will never be reconciled to King Henry, so he should join the forces that wish to overthrow the King. But Becket is horrified by the suggestion: “No one shall say 1 betrayed a king”(Murder, p. 34). A Fourth Tempter arrives—to Becket’s surprise, since he expected only three. The Fourth Tempter is hardest for Becket to overcome because this one suggests that Becket succumb to the lure of the power he can exert from beyond the grave—he will have glory after death and tremendous influence as a saint. “Saint and Martyr rule from beyond the grave,” he tells Becket, asking him to picture his dismayed enemies, the lines of pilgrims to his tomb, his glittering jeweled shrine (Murder, p. 38). Becket admits that he has thought of these things.

The Tempter insists that he take the way of saintly martyrdom—he will achieve the glory of God while his persecutors live in torment. But this would be doing the right thing for the wrong reasons; it is wrong to desire sainthood for one’s own personal glory and to triumph over one’s enemies. Becket despairs: “Is there no way, in my soul’s sickness, / Does not lead to damnation in pride?” (Murder, p. 40). At this low point, everyone comes together to haunt him—the Women of Canterbury wail about their suffering, the Priests caution him not to fight an unwinnable fight, the Tempters tell him that “life is a cheat and a disappointment (Murder, p. 41). Finally the Women caution him, “Destroy yourself and we are destroyed.” (Murder, p, 44). But Becket suddenly sees that he must submit himself to martyrdom for this is the will of God, though it may seem to everyone else to be the “Senseless self-slaughter of a lunatic / Arrogant passion of a fanatic”(Murder, p. 45).

History, Becket realizes, will have to draw its own conclusions as to his motives. Interlude (In the cathedral on Christmas morning, 1170). The two parts of the play are sepa-rated by Becket’s Christmas morning sermon, which is preached directly to the audience as if they were the congregation of Canterbury Cathedral. The text on which he preaches is the fourteenth verse of the second chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will” (Luke 2:14). Becket explains that mourning and rejoicing coexist in Christianity, particularly on Christmas Day where both Christ’s birth and death are celebrated in the mass. He asks the congregation, “Does it seem strange to you that angels should have announced Peace when ceaselessly the world has been stricken with War and the fear of War?”(Murder, p. 48). God does give peace, he assures the congregation, but not necessarily worldly peace. Becket goes on to note that the day after Christmas is St.

Stephen’s day, celebrating the first martyr; just as the churchgoers simultaneously celebrate the birth and death of Christ, so they should both rejoice and mourn martyrs like Stephen. “A Christian martyrdom,” says Becket, “is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident … a martyrdom is always the design of God”(Murder, p. 49). He concludes his sermon by telling the assembled people: “I do not think I shall ever preach to you again; and because it is possible that in a short time you may have yet another martyr, and that one perhaps not the last.”(Murder, p. 50). Part 2, Scene 1 (In the Archbishop’s hall, December 29, 1170). The Chorus of the Poor Women of Canterbury opens the scene; the women are still wondering about what the future holds, what consequences it will bring for them in the spring. The time is four days after Christmas, as shown by the entrance of the Three Priests. Each carries a banner: The First Priest carries the banner of Saint Stephen (St. Stephen’s Day, December 26); the Second Priest carries the banner of St.

John The Apostle (December 27); the Third Priest carries a banner of the Holy Innocents (December 28). That makes the current date December 29th. Four Knights arrive and announce themselves as servants of the King who have urgent business with the Archbishop. Becket grants them audience, and they explain to him that he is in revolt FROM EDWARD GRIM’S EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF BECKET’S MURDER The murderers followed him; “Absolve,” they cried, “and restore to communion those whom you have excommunicated, and restore their powers to those whom you have suspended.” He answered, “There has been no satisfaction, and I will not absolve Them.” “Then you shall die,” they cried, “and receive what you deserve.” “I am ready,” he replied, “to die for my Lord, that in my blood the Church may obtain liberty and peace. But in the name of Almighty God, I forbid you to hurt my people whether clerk or lay”.

… At the third blow he fell on his knees and elbows, offering himself a living victim, and saying in a low voice, “For the Name of Jesus and the protection of the Church I am ready to embrace death.” Then the third knight inflicted a terrible wound as he lay, by which the sword was broken against the pavement, and the crown which was large was separated from the head. The fourth knight prevented any from interfering so that the others might freely perpetrate the murder. As to the fifth, no knight but that clerk who had entered with the knights, that a fifth blow might not be wanting to the martyr who was in other things like to Christ, he put his foot on the neck of the holy priest and precious martyr, and, horrible to say, scattered his brain and blood over the pavement, calling out to the others, “Let us away, knights; he will rise no more.” (Grim) against his monarch. He has “cheated, swindled, lied; broke his oath and betrayed his King” (Murder, p. 60). Becket denies this and claims to be a loyal subject.

When the Knights attack him, he is saved by a number of priests and attendants who interpose themselves between the Knights and the Archbishop. The Knights then lay out the specific charges against Becket: he fled England to stir up trouble against King Henry with the King of France and the Pope, and he “suspended those who crowned the young prince,” (he cast a number of Henry’s followers out of the Church.) The Knights ask Becket to absolve these followers and reinstate them in the Church. Becket says they should petition the Pope for this, not him. The Knights then ask Becket to leave England again, but Becket refuses; he has already been away from Canterbury and his people for seven years. He further tells the Knights that he is not their enemy; their problem is that they have broken Church laws. At this point the Knights threaten him: “Priest, you have spoken in peril of your life,” and exit the stage (Murder, p. 65). The Chorus bursts out in a long poetic speech; they are having visions of death and waste. Becket reassures them, saying they will soon forget these horrors. The Priests arrive and tell Thomas to hide from his attackers in the Church.

Becket refuses; he is ready for his death when and if it should come. But the Priests forcibly drag him away. Part 2, Scene 2 (In the cathedral, December 29, 1170). The Chorus of Women pray to God that suffering should not be in vain. Inside the Cathedral, the Priests are barring the door against the Knights, but Becket demands they open the doors: “I will not have the house of prayer … turned into a fortress”(Murder, p. 73). The Priests argue that the Knights are not men but beasts—and surely Becket would secure the cathedral against beasts? But Becket insists that the church doors remain open to all men, even enemies. The doors are opened, and the Knights enter, apparently drunk, demanding to see Becket. One last time they lay down conditions: “Absolve all those you have excommunicated. Resign the powers you have arrogated. Restore to the King the money you appropriated. Renew the obedience you have violated”(Murder, p. 75).

Becket replies that he is ready to die, and with cries of “Traitor!” they kill him while the Chorus of Women give voice to their poetry of woe: “The land is foul, the water is foul, our beasts and our-selves defiled with blood”(Murder, p. 76). At this point, the play takes a radical turn. Up until now, the narrative had unfolded almost entirely in poetry; now the Knights step up and ad-dress the audiences in the colloquial speech of the 1930s. The first Knight, Reginald Fiz Urse, says he and his companions know that they look like the villains of the play: You are Englishmen, and therefore you believe in fair play: and when you see one man being set upon by four, then your sympathies are all with the underdog… . Nevertheless, I appeal to your sense of honor. You are Englishmen, and therefore you will not judge anybody without hearing both sides of the case. (Murder, p. 78) He then asks each of the other Knights to introduce themselves and present their justifications for Becket’s murder to the audience.

The Third Knight introduces himself as Baron William de Traci. He tells the audience that their actions have been perfectly disinterested; they are just putting their country first. He explains that they had to get drunk to get up their courage: “When you come to the point, it does go against the grain to kill an Archbishop,” he confesses (Murder, p. 79). He further says that it was their duty to perform this horrible act, even though they know that the King will have to publicly repudiate and exile them. The Second Knight, Sir Hugh de Morville, explains that Becket is not really the underdog and asks the crowd to weigh King Henry’s aims against Becket’s. King Henry is trying to unite a kingdom, to curb the excessive powers of local government, to reform the English legal system. Becket, on the other hand, puts God before the King, confusing Church and State and placing them at odds with each other. Morville says that the audience should remember that if the Church in modern days is subservient to the state, it was the Knights who began to make that possible. The Fourth Knight, Richard Brito, asks the audience, “Who killed the Archbishop?” (Murder, p.

83). Brito claims that Becket sought his own death; clearly he wanted to be a martyr. “Even at the last, he could have given us reason; you have seen how he evaded our questions … he could still have easily escaped”(Murder, p. 83). Instead, he insisted that the doors be opened and let the Knights in while they were still in a murderous rage. The First Knight then dismisses the audience in a tone of authority worthy of a police state: “I suggest that you now disperse quietly to your homes. Please be careful not to loiter in groups at street corners, and do nothing that might provoke any public outburst”(Murder, p. 84). The Knights exit and the Priests rush onstage. The First Priest worries that “the heathen shall build on the ruins / Their world without God,” but he is assured by the other priests that the Church will be stronger as a result of today (Murder, p. 84). They join in with the Chorus to give thanks to God, to acknowledge their human weakness in fearing worldly leaders more than the justice of God, and to ask God for His mercy.

The role of the audience: Witness, judge, criminal—or hero? Late in the second act, right after their killing of Thomas Becket, the murderous Knights address the audience in the colloquial speech of the 1930s: “We beg you to give us your attention for a few moments. We know that you may be disposed to judge unfavorably of our action”(Murder, p. 78). This is not th first time that the audience has been given an explicit role in the play; in the opening lines, the Chorus, whose members function as representatives of the audience, notes that they have been called to the cathedral to bear witness. But the witnesses are abruptly recast as judges at the end of the second act: “You are Englishmen, an therefore will not judge anybody without hearing both side of the case”(Murder, p. 78). A GENUINE MARTYR? Even today, historical opinion on Thomas Becket is deeply divided. He was canonized a saint three years after his death, and many people view Becket as a martyr who heroically withstood the demands of a tyrannical king; this is Eliot’s view. Others have been less impressed with Becket.

King Henry VIII (1491-1547) destroyed his shrine, burned his bones, and had Becket’s name removed from religious missals, and the historian Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) called Becket, “a noisy egotist and hypocrite” (Carlyle in Tydeman, p. 44). In Murder in the Cathedral, Becket asks history to judge him, but there may never be one final verdict. From that point on, the Knights try to win the audience’s support for their murder of Becket, and the arguments they make are eerily persuasive. Of course a modern-day audience supports the subordination of church to state, doesn’t it? Of course such an audience recognizes that violence is necessary for maintaining the social order. Of course, the audience is patriotic and wishes to have a strong and powerful nation. “At another time,” the Second Knight says, “you would condemn an Archbishop by a vote of Parliament and execute him formally as a traitor, and no one would have to bear the burden of being called murderer”(Murder, p. 82).

By appealing directly to the audience in this fashion, the Knights illustrate that its members are not mere witnesses, but are actually complicit in the murder of Becket and men like him. “You” would condemn an archbishop in another time, the Knights say; Eliot is implicitly challenging the audience to repudiate this assertion, thereby bringing the story of Becket into the 1930s, the “other” time to which the Knights allude. There were certain parallels, to be sure. In his sermon, Becket talks to an audience “stricken with War and the fear of War,” a reality also true in the post-World War I and pre-World War II 1930s (Murder, p. 48). Also the 1930s were years when state power was being consolidated by monarch-like dictators such as Adolf Hitler in Germany. Eliot’s play does not put King Henry II onstage as a character, which makes the state power that Becket is opposing faceless and vague, and invites the audience to draw a comparison with its own time.

Like the nation-building monarchs of the twelfth century, the dictators of Eliot’s era promoted national loyalty over religious faith and individual conscience. It is important to note that these dictators had not yet committed most of the heinous crimes for which their names have since become infamous. However, the Knights in Eliot’s play, prophetically, justify Becket’s murder with an excuse that is now sadly familiar: they were only following orders. Eliot’s play therefore lays down a challenge to the audience: it invites theatergoers of his day to resist both “reason” and “the law” when it comes to opposing tyranny and state-mandated violence. The audience is encouraged not to think of the play as dealing with a particular historical moment, but to realize that Becket’s choice to put his conscience before his country is one that they themselves may be called upon to make. Sources and literary context Eliot wrote Murder in the Cathedral to fulfill a commission from the sponsors of the 1935 Canterbury Festival for a Christian-themed play. The fact that the play was to be performed in Canterbury Cathedral clearly inspired Eliot to try his hand at the historical tale.

Initially the play’s sponsors were disappointed with Eliot’s choice, since the Becket story is such an obvious theme for Canterbury. In fact, a previous Becket play by Lord Alfred Tennyson had been written in 1879 and revived for the 1932 and 1933 Canterbury THE GOLDEN AGE OF DETECTIVE FICTION The original title of Eliot’s play was “Fear in the Way,” a biblical quote from the book of Ecclesiast. According to William Tydeman, it was the director’s wife, Henzie Raeburn, who suggested that Eliot coin a title more suggestive of a murder mystery. The 1920s and ‘30s were considered to be the “Golden Age” of the English murder mystery, featuring writers such as Agatha Christie (Murder on the Orient Express, 1934), John Dickson Carr (The White Priory Murders, 1934), and Dorothy Savers, (Murder Must Advertise, 1933). Raeburn hoped that a more contemporary-sounding title would draw people to Eliot’s play.

From just the few titles listed, one can easily see that Murder in the Cathedra! sounds like a typical example of the genre. But certainly, Eliot’s play is not a typical “whodunit.” The murder mystery was nicknamed a “whodunit” because it challenged readers to figure out who committed the crime, but in Murder in the Cathedral, Becket’s murder happens right in front of the audience. So there is no mystery as to who really killed Thomas Becket—or is there? It is worth considering to what extent Eliot’s title—so evocative of a murder mystery—invites the audience to play detective and examine what they see and know. Yes, the tour Knights killed Becket, but were they the only ones? Doesn’t Henry II bear some responsibility, since the Knights were acting on his command, and what about the people who let it happen—the Priests, the citizens, all those who failed to stand up, as Becket did, to tyranny? How does one apportion responsibility in a situation like this? Festivals, so it is understandable that the sponsors’ first reaction to Eliot’s idea was dismay. However, Eliot’s version is very different from Tennyson’s.

Eliot went back to primary source material, and his play relies heavily on Edward Grim’s eyewitness account of the killing. Tennyson, like most people who have retold the tale, focused directly on the quarrel between Becket and his one-time friend, Henry II. But King Henry doesn’t even appear as a character in Murder in the Cathedral. Resisting the obvious drama to be found in the onstage clash of two powerful men, Eliot focuses instead on Becket’s internal conflict as he prepares himself for martyrdom, even going so far as to structure the play like a Catholic mass. There are two sections (a mass is divided into “The Liturgy of the Word” and “The Liturgy of the Eucharist”) divided by a sermon, all leading up to the climax of Becket’s redeeming death (which mirrors Christ’s crucifixion). By drawing upon history and ritual, Eliot was able to construct an entirely new Becket play. Events in History at the Time the Play Was Written The rise of dictators “I wanted to bring home to the audience the contemporary relevance of the situation,” Eliot wrote of Murder in the Cathedral.

“The style therefore had to be neutral, committed neither to the present nor the past” (Eliot, Poetry and Poets, p. 80). As noted, the story of how one man resisted the pressure of his King to ignore his obligations to the Church was highly relevant for Europe in the 1930s, when many nations were falling under increasingly tyrannical regimes. Adolph Hitler ruled Germany, Benito Mussolini ruled Italy, Joseph Stalin had total control of Russia, Englebert Dollfuss ruled Austria, and Turkey continued along under the more benevolent dictatorship of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. It was an era in which state power was being solidified and wielded to an extreme degree. In Germany, Hitler’s Nazi Party won power in 1933; these elections would be the last until after the Second World War. The following year gave rise to the Night of the Long Knives, in which Hitler arranged for the murder of his enemies within the Nazi party. There was little protest from organized religion during these early years of Hitler’s regime; in fact, quite the contrary. At first the regime won the support of the Protestant Church.

A group of “Deutsche Christen,” or “German Christians,” not only accepted the Nazi Party but attempted to have it officially sanctified. On November 20, 1933, an agreement was signed between the Deutsche Christen and the Hitler Youth Movement, uniting the 800,000 members of Christian youth groups with the Hitler Youth. From then on, anyone who did not belong to the Hitler Youth could not participate in church youth activities. The Deutschen Christen understood that this meant a new relationship between church and state: But it is clear that… we must find a new form of collaboration between State and Church. The State is interested in seeing order prevail in the internal working of the Church, and that is also the Führer’s will and desire. We implicitly trust the Führer to find the proper contemporary form of State/Church collaboration. (Reichsbischof in Lyons) TWO SAINTS OF THE HOLOCAUST Saint Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941) was a Polish priest who helped hundreds of Jews escape the terror of the Nazis and later offered his life in place of a fellow prisoner’s at Auschwitz.

He was canonized in 1982. Saint Edith Stein (1891-1942), feminist, scholar, and theologian, was born Jewish in Germany. She converted to Catholicism in 1922, and became a nun in 1933, taking the religious name Teresa, Benedicta a Cruce (Teresa, Blessed of the Cross). She died in the Auschwitz gas chamber on August 9, 1942, when she refused to deny her Jewish heritage. A witness to her arrest by the Nazis says that she took her sister Rosa’s hand and said, “Come Rosa. We’re going for our people.” Meanwhile, Germany’s Catholic Church did little to stem the rising tide of Hitler’s murderous regime during these early years, partly because the Nazis were at that time enemies of the overtly atheistic Soviet Communists, whom the Church feared even more. But while Hitler had yet to commit the horrendous mass murders that would make his name infamous, there were already those who felt that the Church should be taking more of a stand.

In 1935, the same year that Murder in the Cathedral debuted, theologian Karl Barth wrote: The story of the Confessing Church [i.e. the Catholic Church] in the Nationalist Socialist Germany of these years is no glorious chronicle for its participants, no heroic or saintly story… . We can and must reproach this Confessing Church for not recognizing the enemy early on in its real dangerousness and for not unambiguously and forcefully opposing to him early on…. She [the Church] has … remained silent on the action against the Jews, on the amazing treatment of political opponents, on the suppression of the freedom of political opponents, on the suppression of the freedom of the press in the new Germany and on so much else against which the Old Testament prophets would certainly have spoken out. (Barth, p. 45) Barth here reproaches the German Catholic Church for remaining silent in the face of so many political injustices; even today, historians debate to what extent Catholics bear responsibility for not sufficiently opposing the will of Nazi and Fascist regimes. To be fair, many Catholics did eventually resist the orders of Hitler and the other dictators, often at the risk of their own lives.

By 1941, at least 700 priests had been killed in Poland alone, and 3,000 more were in prisons or concentration camps. Many priests and nuns hid persecuted Jews in their homes, rectories, convents or monasteries. Some historians believe that between 700, 000 and 860, 000 Jewish lives were saved by the intervention of the Church. But in 1935, Karl Barth was regretting that there was as yet no heroic or saintly story to be told. The age had not yet produced its Thomas Beckets, though, unhappily, a decade of murderous tyranny would soon produce countless martyrs. Poetic drama Theater in Eliot’s day was dominated by a style known as “realism,” which attempted to portray how people really live and speak. But theater had not always been realist; in fact, historically, drama had been created in verse—whether written by ancient Greek dramatists like Sophocles and Euripides or by Shakespeare. Drama was actually a subvariety of poetry. In the 1930s, T. S.

Eliot, then the world’s most-famous poet, attempted to bring poetic drama back to the stage. Murder in the Cathedral is a play largely written in verse. Its lines qualify as poetry by the broadest definition: words chosen for their sound and rhythm as well as their sense. Eliot’s poem uses a range of poetic devices: Rhyme You see, my Lord, I do not wait upon ceremony: Here I have come, forgetting all acrimony, Hoping that your present gravity Will find excuse for my humble levity. (Murder, p. 23) Alliteration (note the repetition of beginning letters and sounds—for example, m in the first line; w and/in the second): Yes! men must maneuver. Monarchs also, Waging war abroad, need fast friends at home. Private policy is public profit; Dignity still shall be dressed with decorum. (Murder, p. 29) Repetition (of whole phrases and of individual words; note how the word “good” appears four times in the four lines below): For good or ill, let the wheel turn. The wheel has been still, these seven years, and no good.

For good or ill, let the wheel turn. For who knows the end of good and evil? (Murder, p. 18) Metaphor and imagery (consider Becket’s comparison of his encroaching enemies to hawks): For a little time the hungry hawk Will only soar and hover, circling lower, Waiting excuse, pretense, opportunity. End will be simple, sudden, God-given. (Murder, p. 23) Eliot also adopts a number of devices from the history of poetic drama and from Christian liturgy. The Chorus of the Poor Women of Canterbury recalls the choruses of Greek drama, which in the classics often commented on the action. Christian liturgy uses a rhythmic repetition of phrases in prayer—as in the Christian chant, “Lord Have Mercy. Christ Have Mercy. Lord Have Mercy”—and Eliot’s play includes similarly structured lines such as “A doom on the house, a doom on yourself, a doom on the world” (Murder, p. 19). Eliot and other verse dramatists such as W. B.

Yeats and Christopher Fry were considered a miniature movement in the 1930s and 1940s; as modernist poets, they were interested in combining past and present through art by updating older forms. But poetic drama has yet to recapture the imagination of the mainstream theater-going public. Reception Eliot joked, in a lecture, that he had “an advantage” as a beginning playwright. “It [Murder in the Cathedral] was a religious play, and people who go deliberately to a religious play at a religious festival expect to be patiently bored and to satisfy themselves with the feeling that they have done something meritorious” (Eliot, Poetry and Poets, p. 79). If the audiences who saw Murder in the Cathedral were expecting boredom, they were disappointed; the play was a great success in its initial eight-day run and soon moved south to the secular London stage. A MODERN BECKET?

The situation in Russia in 1934 was no better than that of Germany: this year saw the beginning of “the Great Terror” (1934-38), during which Joseph Stalin purged the state of his enemies by the use of secret police, rigged trials, deportations, and speedy executions. Catholic priests were accused of destroying bridges, railways, and factories, and of spying. The regime put them on trial, as it had in the previous decade for practicing religion when the Soviets had officially rejected it. From the trials of Archbishop John Cieplak and various Roman Catholic clergy in Stalinist Russia, as witnessed by Father Walsh in 1923. N. V. Krylenko was the prosecutor. “Will you stop teaching the Christian religion?” “We cannot,” came the uniform reply. “It is the law of God.” “That law does not exist on Soviet Territory,” replied Krylenko. “You must choose…. As for your religion, t spit on it, as I spit on all religions.” (Walsh, p. 13) While favorably reviewed by most critics, Murder in the Cathedral was always the focus of critical arguments.

Reviewers faulted the play for a lack of action on the stage. Eliot’s own director, Martin Browne, admitted that Eliot “has no experience of the actor’s art” (Browne in Tydeman, p. 67). Christopher Innes summarizes much of the critical opinion when he states that the play “denies any suspense: A man comes home foreseeing that he will be killed, and he is killed”’ (Innes, pp. 392-93). There was also controversy over the play’s being in verse: theater critic Kenneth Tynan argued that despite Eliot’s defense of poetry as the natural medium for the stage, the best parts of Murder in the Cathedral are the knight’s self-justifying speeches and Becket’s sermon—all written in prose. Still, many critics continue to be awed by the beauty of the play’s language and spirit, deeming it remarkable for its portrayal of an individual “mind and spirit together at war with the innermost temptations that can beset the human soul” (Morrah, p. 9). —Francesca Coppa Barth, Karl. The German Church Conflict. Richmond: John Knox Press, 1965.

Bloom, Harold, ed. T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral. New York: Chelsea, 1998. Eliot, T. S. Murder in the Cathedral. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935. _____. On Poetry and Poets. London: Faber & Faber, 1957. Grim, Edward. “The Murder of Thomas Becket, 1170.” EyeWitness—History through the Eyes of Those Who lived It. 1997. (11 Aug. 1997). Innes, Christopher. “T.S. Eliot: the Drama of Conversion.” In Modern British Drama 1890-1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Lyons, James R. “Idolatry: The Impact of National Socialism on the Churches of Nazi Europe.” The Ecumenical Institute for Jewish-Christian Studies. 1999. (1 Aug. 2002). McGill, William J.

“Voices in the Cathedral: The Chorus in Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral.” Modern Drama 23 (1980): 292-96. Morrah, Dermot. Review of Murder in the Cathedral. The Times, 2 November 1935, 9. Tydeman, William. Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party: Text and Performance. London: Macmillan Education, 1988. Walsh, Edmund A. “The Catholic Church in Present Day Russia.” Report delivered before the American Catholic Historical Association, Minneapolis 29 December 1931. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. MLA Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list.

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Question: Which poetic drama that was first performed in 1935 draws on the writing of Edward Grim, a clerk who was a witness to a killing in 1170?
Answer: Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot